Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday, December 25, 2004

Through all the focus on state and national political matters over the past few months, an important event in the life of Carrboro received inadequate attention. I refer to the August (and august) reappointment of Carrboro's poet laureate, Patrick Herron.

With all the decidedly non-lyrical voices coming over the TV and radio during election season and its aftermath, it's refreshing to be able to step back and reflect on the significance of poetry to our lives and culture.

Although we often don't credit it today, poetry has been a key factor in marking the changes that accompanied what we consider the development of modern society.

One seminal work in defining that relationship was the French poet Baudelaire's 1865 prose poem "Loss of a Halo." Given Carrboro's current focus on downtown traffic flow, it is appropriate to consider Baudelaire's poetic look at a prominent poet who has crossed one of what were then the still recently constructed boulevards of Paris.

Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday, December 18, 2004

Two weeks ago, the International Worker Justice Campaign and UE-150, the N.C. Public Service Workers Union, sponsored a public hearing on the need for collective bargaining rights for public sector employees. The testimony at that event, from numerous university and Chapel Hill employees, was unsettling to say the least.

It has been pretty well established that certain blue collar job categories both at UNC and with the town have historically had a disproportionate number of African-American workers. These workers have suffered under difficult working conditions, poor pay, discriminatory promotion policies and grievance procedures that are often stacked against them.

Those were some of the topics discussed by workers at the recent hearing. Particularly harrowing were the descriptions of the effect of some of the chemicals that cleaning crews are required to use at the hospital. Exposure to these chemicals has caused respiratory problems, nosebleeds and other health problems. Some workers were coughing up blood.